This book presents thirteen essays by Keith Dowding, one of the world's foremost authorities on political and social power. Ranging across a number of related topics - including luck, choice, freedom and rights - Dowding criticises static explanatory models of power, emphasising the need for a more dynamic approach. The alternative he proposes is a rational choice resourcist model, which takes into account the crucial factors of reputation and luck.

The power of agents, notably leaders, is partially based on our perception of their power. In strategic settings luck plays a...

This book contributes to and expands on the major international Comparative Policy Agendas Project. It sets the project in context, and provides a comprehensive assessment of the changing policy agenda in Australia over a forty-year period, using a unique systematic dataset of governor-general speeches, legislation and parliamentary questions, and then mapping these on to media coverage and what the public believes (according to poll evidence) government should be concentrating upon. The book answers some important questions in political science: what are the most important legislative...

Governing cabinets are composed of ministers who come and go even as governments march on. They work for the chief executive, the prime minister or the president, for their parties and for the constituent groups from which they come. They are chosen for their role and dismissed from it for all sorts of reasons that vary across time and country.

This book examines the process of selection, shuffling and removal of ministers in national cabinets around the world. Drawing on original data over several decades, it offers a series of case studies of countries from around the world with...